In March of this year, Google announced that it would be shutting down its news aggregation service Google Reader. The news sent the tech world into a frenzy, and spawned a petition with over 100,000 signatures.

So why, if it was so popular, did Google decide to shut Reader down? Initially, it was written off as a ‘spring cleaning’ measure to kill a dying service. But today, a new report offers more details on the reason for its demise…

Wired was able to track down and speak with Richard Gringras, who is the Senior Director of News & Social Products at Google. And he had a few words to say about the tech giant’s decision to shutdown Google Reader:

“As a culture we have moved into a realm where the consumption of news is a near-constant process. Users with smartphones and tablets are consuming news in bits and bites throughout the course of the day — replacing the old standard behaviors of news consumption over breakfast along with a leisurely read at the end of the day.”

I have to agree with Gringras here. There was a time when I used Google Reader frequently throughout my day to get the latest tech news. But as soon as I started messing around with Twitter and its Lists feature, I was hooked.

I still use Reeder, a popular app for Google Reader, every now and then. But for the most part, I use Twitter and my ‘Tech News’ list for the latest news updates. So honestly, I’m not in any hurry to find a Reader replacement.

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I guess I’m getting old. Twitter is great for live news but sucks for articles of any kind. RSS is much better at curating articles and having a read/unread status. I learn far more useful information about tech from Reeder than I do from Twitter.

David Cole

I want to know how these “I use twitter lists” for articles 1….use their lists? The all official twitter apps bury lists so far down they’re a pain to access.

2, How do you deal with realeases etc from overnight, scroll all the way back through your list? Seems an RSS reader is much easier as it just catches the articles and waits for you to read them. Twitter doesn’t wait.

Michael Allen

Just another piece of evidence that petitions mean dick. Just because 100,000 people want something doesn’t mean Google HAS to give in…
There’s a petition for Goddammed everything now, and none of them are worth the effort it take to sign them because when the day is done, it’s still their business.

SirPsycho

Stupid move on their part. They are taking a move from Apple’s playbook, telling us what we want instead of giving us what we want.

Imahottguy

I use an RSS reader (NewsRack) on my Mac, iPhone and iPad throughout the day, every day. I have migrated my info to Feedly and am trying to get used to it, but wish that I could keep using what had worked for me for years… Feedly is nice but I really just want simplicity instead of flat minimalism sometimes. I don’t much care for twitter for news; rather I follow people/developers not blogs/companies. To me it’s like saying why have a separate email when Facebook provides you your very own, that way you can email and see all the annoying status updates of pictures of food and your crazy right/left wing nut uncle who POSTS EVERYTHING IN CAPS THX LIKE THIS FOR CHANGE! Sigh…

Patrick

There must be another reason behind this. Oh Google..

chjode

The true reason is the Google Reader didn’t support ads. Plain and simple. Google couldn’t inject ads into RSS feeds displayed in Reader, so they killed it and suggest you use Google+ with the rest of the Google employees.